GOP's Reed Brings Political Clout to Southeast U.S.
by Chad Groening
September 28, 2004
(AgapePress) - The director of the Bush-Cheney campaign for the southeastern United States says he is working to make sure than the GOP does not get "out hustled" in Florida and other battleground states.Ralph Reed is perhaps best known for his work with the Christian Coalition. During his tenure as the group's executive director (1989-1996), its budget grew from $200,000 to $27 million -- and its membership grew from 2,000 to 2 million. And as chairman of the Georgia Republican Party, the Georgia native helped to elect that state's first GOP in 130 years in November 2002.
Now Reed has been put in charge of trying to get the southeastern United States in the Bush column this November. He says his main focus is Florida, where George W. Bush won by just 537 votes in 2000.
"We do know we got out-hustled at the end, and they did a better job of delivering their core supporters to the polls than we did of delivering ours," Reed admits. "There is no question about that -- and that happened in Florida, it happened in Ohio, it happened in Iowa and Wisconsin; it happened all over the country."
Reed says as a result, the GOP is focusing on maximizing its own turnout. "Now with early voting, absentee voting, and same-day registration, this is the most comprehensive, grassroots, get-out-the-vote effort in the history of the Republican Party," he says. And that focus during the homestretch leading up to Election Day, he says, will be to turn out "every one of the Bush voters in the country, particularly the battleground states."
Reed recognizes that even though the president is up in the polls, the only poll that really counts is the one on November 2.
